Monday, October 6, 2008

Return to Sender Part II

Seriously, take the goddamn pins out of the goddamn voo-doo doll already. I'm screaming "UNCLE" over here.

Last week ended pretty much as it had begun...with me wanting to hide in a closet waiting for it all to be over with. Thursday and Friday were mostly uneventful, but Saturday more than made up for two days of calm.

Saturday morning I went on a light pre-race ride with Jeff, Beth and Fergus. The rain had managed to let up long enough to give all of us a chance to loosen up the legs for Alpenrose. All was good in the hood, except for the fact that I got a flat mid-ride and all (yes-every single one) of my spare tubes had holes in them. C'mon, really? Then Beth and Jeff also flatted. My bad ju-ju was rubbing off on everyone.

Rolled home around 11, quickly changed into clean bike shorts and headed over to pick up the Redline (with a new rear derailleur and steel fork) from Sellwood Cycles so that I could pre-ride the Alpenrose course. I had an itch to race the singlespeed, so I brought both bikes along.

After about 60 minutes of pre-riding the course, I loaded the bikes onto the rack and headed for home. One hundred meters out of Alpenrose, I heard a horrible noise and looked in my rear view mirror. No bikes.

My hitch rack had somehow failed and there was bike carnage trailing out from behind my car. I stood there shellshocked for about 45 seconds before two guys (one was James from Yakima Bike Vigilantes, who is graciously hooking me up with replacement parts for the rack) rolled up behind me and helped me peel the bikes off the pavement and get them back on the rack.

The singlespeed was on the outside and took the brunt of the crash. Both wheels are tacoed in ten different directions, but there doesn't appear to be any damage to the frame, crank or handlebars. The Redline is fine, but it looks like someone took a hammer to the frame in a few locations. Dented, but rideable. The top photo is the top tube. That white mark is not cell-phone camera glare. That is where the paint is now missing right below a dent. The bottom is the down tube...the quality of the picture hides the truly depressing depth of the dents and paint destruction.

The back wheel of the singlespeed...the front one doesn't look much better:

I called D immediately to commiserate. He didn't say anything at the time, but when I was re-telling the story later on that afternoon, he turned a little green. Turns out that when he came by on Wednesday to jump start the Subaru, he had to go in through the hatchback because I had locked the doors and, with the battery dead and the keys in the ignition, the key-fob opener wouldn't work. When he went to put the rack back up, somehow the pin didn't get secured correctly. Therefore, crash boom bang with the bikes.

I was able to race the Redline at Alpenrose (and did surprisingly well considering I was riding a demolition derby bike), but given the amount of damage to the frame, I think its going to be demoted to pit bike status.

So I'm currently on the lookout for a 49-50" frame and fork...and some good karma...

Vital Statistics

If you were to ask me to describe myself in two words, I would say "bike dork." Mostly because "incurable smart ass" is three words.
On February 24, 2011, I celebrated my first year as a cancer survivor. With the structural integrity of my boob currently stabilized, it is back to writing about bikes and passing judgment on my fellow human beings.